The present disclosure relates to electronic communication. In particular, the present disclosure relates to a system and methods for fallback messaging.
The popularity and use of social networks and other types of electronic communication have grown dramatically in recent years. Traditionally users have used social networks to view and comment on each other's social stream, however new features to facilitate communication between members of a social network have been developed. For example, users can use built-in messaging functionality to send each other instant messages.
While users once accessed these social networks exclusively on desktop or laptop computers via the Internet, users are now accessing these social networks on their portable electronic devices, such as smartphones, netbooks and tablets via the Internet. However, Internet access from these portable electronic devices can, at times, be unavailable or intermittent and prevent users from receiving or sending messages to one another. For example, due to coverage dead zones, weak connectivity or overloaded cellphone networks, a user may fail to receive a message from another user of the social network.
Current systems and methods have been limited in how they exchange messages when users are unable to reliably access the Internet. For example, when an Internet connection is intermittent or not readily available, a user using these systems and methods might not be able to send or receive messages, or might only be able to send or receive messages when access to the Internet is again available.